It’s a “Win/Win”: Inviting Parents to Participate With Their Children

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Involving Parents to Improve Student Engagement and Success

Abstract

This paper examines parents’ ongoing participation with their children in an afterschool reading tutoring project. There are approximately 50 parents in the project. Several have multiple children enrolled. Nonetheless, the faithfulness with which parents participate in the sessions has been a cause for both admiration and examination as we try to understand why parents persist at endeavors such as these with their children who struggle in school. Utilizing an embedded mixed methods design we capture the perceptions of all participating parents. Highlighted here are four parents’ cases which provided us with in-depth understanding of parent’s experiences related the tutoring and the reasons why they continue to participate with their children.

Authors

• Jean P. Rohr, Elon University

• Ye He, University of North Carolina - Greensboro

• Mary Beth Murphy

• Gerald Knight